Thursday on Today 7/12

Yes, I have the right date today. Seems I got a bit ahead of myself a couple of days ago and skipped over the 10th. Anyway, I'm back on track now. The Today Show's third hour started with a clip of Matt Lauer's earlier interview with troubled Miss New Jersey, Amy Palumbo. She finally decided to release the facebook photos in question in a Today Show exclusive. The beauty pageant committee is reviewing them to decide whether or not they break the moral clause and if she should lose her crown. The pictures were in poor taste, but not what most would call obscene. Everyone was fully clothed. One showed her boyfriend "playfully" biting her her breast. Another had her lying on her back holding her legs up in the air, spread eagle. Those were, as she admits, the worst of them. The others were mostly stupid party pictures with her drinking shots with her friends. And one had her making out with some guy dressed as a wrestler. Then making out with another guy. They may have been the same guy, but it didn't look that way to me. Ironically, even though there are several photos of her doing shots, she claims she rarely drinks. I had to laugh at that. Those were such rare occasions that she had to post them on the internet? Who's she trying to fool--besides the pageant committee, of course? I said it before and I'll say it again, if you're any kind of a public figure, don't do stupid things like post pictures on the web of activities you'll probably regret ever doing. If this were a brain pageant instead of beauty pageant, she'd have lost hands down.

From that stupidity we went on to a segment entitled, One Child's Dream: From One Heart With Sarah Ferguson. Remember Fergie? And no, I don't mean the singer from The Black Eyed Peas. The former Dutchess of York is helping this kid, Pat, who has leukemia and is "driving for donors" to get more people to donate bone marrow--which leukemia victims need transplanted to survive. From what I've heard, that's a painful process, but there are a lot of people with leukemia who are in desperate need, so Pat is doing a lot of people favors by spreading the word and getting more donors. He actually put ads on his bald head to raise money for his dream.

Next, we went to Niagra Falls--the first stop on the America the Beautiful tour--where we learned you can have fun on just $50 a day. You can get a $28 Niagra Falls passport for a trip on the Maid of the Mist. Don't forget your slicker. You can have lunch for 5.95 (they didn't include the tip), go to a museum, visit a theme park, go to the Seneca Niagra Casino. I don't think you can do all this on that $50, those were extras. They did fit the museum and dinner under fifty, but I guess you don't get a beverage and you probably have to stiff the waitstaff.

Today's Kitchen featured former supermodel, Carol Alt, who's promoting her book, "The Raw 50." It's a raw diet and she claims it makes her feel great. I don't think I could stick with it--unless they consider ice cream a raw food. They made some pine nut paste for beet ravioli. They also made something you pour into a glass that actually looked like a smoothie, but the phone rang so I couldn't hear what it was. Get the book if you want some raw recipes. You can use my Amazon search box here on this page to find it.

Till Tomorrow.